


alone, on an empty shore

by fluorexcence



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Infidelity, Older Man/Younger Woman, Sexual Content, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, vfd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 08:30:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19764409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorexcence/pseuds/fluorexcence
Summary: Haunted by the past, Violet Baudelaire looks to the future. The dead are rising and there's ash on her tongue.





	alone, on an empty shore

After the dust settles (ash, she thinks – it’s ash, ash of those dead and gone) they do their best to carry on. VFD is reborn: a new iteration, better this time. This time, it will work. Their purpose is noble, their enemies great, but no longer among their ranks.

Supposedly. 

It is mostly comprised of young people, children of parents who gave their lives for the organization. What can they do but follow and fill the spaces left behind? 

And after all the trauma, all the destruction and death, so much _death_ , they begin again. They must. 

— 

Olaf had vanished. He had held Kit Snicket as she bled to death and then wandered off, stumbling and bleeding, as the Baudelaires frantically tried to save the mother, and when that failed, the baby. In that respect, at least, they are successful. 

Violet had long assumed he had died, that he had gone off to die where the children who reminded him of his greatest loss and greatest failure could not witness his final act. She imagines the waves carrying him off, imagines his body decaying somewhere on the bottom of the ocean. 

It is not much comfort that he is dead. He has a wealth of information, information about what VFD used to be, the schism and all its torrid history. The current leaders are tight-lipped about their organization’s sordid past. 

Still, Violet would like to know. She’s always been curious. 

—

At seventeen, Quigley Quagmire is tall and boyishly handsome. Violet is sixteen and lovely, and when he asks her out, properly this time, she accepts. They are two orphans, bound together by trauma and the cold press of chapped lips, chaste and curious, atop a frigid mountain. 

Her siblings are completing the introductory VFD training, staying with the other neophytes. Violet has just graduated, waiting for the next level of training to begin, just as he is. It makes sense to be together, and so they are. 

In the beginning, they are content with soft kisses and holding hands, but Violet is curious for more. She tells him so over breakfast, feels that this is the natural progression of their relationship. She has never been one to mince words, and Quigley knows and loves this about her, but he still chokes on his coffee, spluttering in surprise. After he recovers himself, he meets her gaze, sees the determined set to her jaw. 

“You’re sure?”

She nods. 

They sleep together in Violet’s tiny apartment. Quigley is painfully nervous, fumbling as he tries to undo the buttons on her dress. Violet smiles and takes over, undressing him with gentle hands and then herself. He is so earnest and unexperienced, and it hurts and he is sorry for it, but his weight on top of her and each jagged push inside her is real. He doesn’t last long, face buried in her neck when he comes, whispering her name and words of love. She holds him to her breast, stroking his hair back as he peppers her face with kisses. 

In the morning, he eats her out, listening attentively to her directions until she is gasping, satiated and glowing. He sits up from between her legs and smiles, eager to please her. 

She loves him. She always has. 

His touches are kind as he cups the weight of her breast, and it stirs something below the surface of her skin. She wants more though, wants the feelings to overwhelm and consume her. 

Sometimes, he is too gentle, too careful with her and she wants him to just fuck her, if only to prove that she can take it, that she is not porcelain. Nothing would break Violet Baudelaire. 

—

He is a dead man walking, face ashen, hair greyed and streaked with white.

“Hello, hello, hello.”

Like a Victorian damsel, her eyes roll back and she faints, collapsing in the foyer of her apartment. 

—

When she wakes, she is still on the floor. Her first thought is how ungentlemanly it is of him to leave her there, but then she remembers the last time she had been unconscious with him, remembers his wandering hands beneath the papery hospital gown. 

She gets up stiffly, leaning heavily against the wall on shaky legs. Her body is in knots, fear rising in her throat like bile. He sits in her armchair, idly examining his fingernails and looking for all the world that he owns the place. 

Violet eyes him warily, disbelief and dread wrapping themselves like vines around her heart. 

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

“You’re dead. You’re not here, you’re _dead._ ” Her head is spinning. This has to be a nightmare – she’s certainly had them before. 

He just chuckles, dry and humorless. “And here I was, thinking you were a smart girl. Didn’t VFD teach you anything?” Olaf uncrosses his legs and stands. “Death isn’t the end, not really. Not for us.”

He looks around her apartment before landing on her, eyes wistful. “Little inventor. How I’ve missed you.”

—

She does not ask how he survived, how he managed to find her. She does not want to know. Violet simply accepts it, just as she accepts her and her siblings’ induction into the very organization that had their parents killed, as she accepts her trauma and loss. 

What else can she do?

He visits her occasionally, appearing like an apparition in her living room. Most times he brings wine, giving her a glass and drinking the rest himself. Sometimes, when she makes tea she will make him a cup too, because Violet is nothing if not polite. He likes the way she makes it, strong but not too bitter. 

He asks about her schooling, about the fate of various associates. Sometimes, he will ask if she remembers odd things from their past, from the chase. 

“Do you remember that ribbon you used to wear?”

She does: pink. She remembers it all, remembers even then his heated gaze as he looked at her, past Esme and everyone else. How his hands wandered just as his gaze did, grazing her knee under the table, his grip firm on her shoulders. How he would stroke her hair back in a fashion that would be tender if it were anyone else. How his fingers wandered up, up, up as he undressed her for surgery. She remembers through the haze how he had pocketed that ribbon. 

Her ribbon is black now. Sensible. 

—

She crosses the length of the room purposefully, grabs his face and kisses him. He growls against her lips, hands immediately going to her waist, pulling her against him. Violet cranes to deepen the kiss, abruptly reminded of just how tall he is.

She pulls back, panting. “I despise you.”

He laughs. “I wouldn’t expect anything less, darling,” and kisses her again, walking her backwards until the edge of her bed hits her legs.

“Have you done this before?” he asks. 

Violet peers up at him as he looms above her. “Yes.”

His brow raises briefly in surprise before his face splits into a wide grin. “Well, well, well. Someone got to deflower my Violet, the lucky bastard. Never mind that though, he doesn’t matter.”

“No?” she questions, tilting her head back as he kisses down her throat. 

“No. I’ll fuck you good and proper, give you what you need.”

He spends ages working her up, his hands and mouth everywhere until no part of her body is left untouched by him. He kisses his way down her stomach, dragging his fingertips across her slicked folds, keeping her on the edge of release until he mercifully presses two fingers inside her, lapping at her cunt as she writhes. 

She is breathless as she drags him up and fits her mouth to his, tasting herself on his lips. When he pushes inside her with one smooth stroke, Violet gasps against his lips at the sudden fullness. Their foreheads are pressed together as he rocks into her, slow and deep. His eyes never leave hers. 

There is a moment of stillness when she meets his gaze through half-lidded eyes and he brushes her hair back, leaning down to press a quick kiss to her parted lips. And then, he reaches between their bodies, stroking her until she comes around him. He follows soon after, stomach muscles tense as he finishes with a low moan. 

She sighs as he pulls out and lays beside her, the bed dipping under his weight. They lay quietly as their breathing evens out, until she gets up and heads to shower. 

“Lock the door on your way out,” she calls behind her shoulder. 

He smiles. 

—

Quigley wants to talk about their past. It is his way of processing all that has happened to them, molded them into who they are now. After two years together, it is their only real point of contention.

Violet does not want to drudge up old memories that weigh heavy in her gut, memories she sees twisted and distorted every time she dreams. She does not see the point in dwelling on the past. She was always putting on a brave face for her siblings, playing mother while her childhood was taken from her, and she has made peace with it all. She’s buried it deep inside her and looked to the future. 

They cope very differently. He tries to push it, and doesn’t understand why she excuses herself or snaps when he brings it up. He knows she bore the worst of it all, but how can he help her if she won’t talk to him?

Very rarely do they argue, but when they do it usually follows a conversation about the past. On those nights she finds herself with Olaf. She does not tell him what happened, and he does not ask, but if he somewhat more attentive and gentle than usual, well, who was she to complain?

For a moment, Violet is outside of her body, floating on the feelings he expertly draws with calloused fingers on her fevered skin. She thinks of nothing, her mind blessedly blank with pleasure. 

—

“Don’t you feel guilty?”

“Guilty? About what?” she asks, unbuttoning her skirt and neatly stepping out of it. 

“Dear, noble, virtuous Violet, having an affair.” He sits on the edge of her bed, his long fingers deftly undoing the buttons on his shirt.

Violet snorts as she tugs her slip over her head. “I would hardly call this an affair.”

“No? Having sex outside of your relationship?” He catches her wrists, drawing her towards him until her legs are pressed against his knees. 

“No,” she says firmly, definitively. “An affair implies some sort of attachment, a relationship. This is just physical. And, we hate each other.” 

“Your man not satisfying you?” he snipes, pulling her into his lap. 

She laughs. “Quigley is a very considerate lover, don’t you worry about that.”

Olaf rests his head against her sternum, letting her card her fingers through his hair. 

“You love him.” It’s not really a question.

“I do.”

“Fair enough, little inventor.” He leans back as she kisses him, running his hands up her bare back.

—

_“Fuck!”_

“Hide!”

“Where? You live in a matchbox, darling!”

He grunts as she throws his clothes at him, the belt catching his shoulder. 

“Violet! Please, I just want to talk. I’m sorry,” Quigley calls, knocking on the door again. 

Violet shimmies into her previously discarded nightgown, her eyes wide with growing panic. She looks around frantically before meeting his eyes. The window. 

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m really not.” 

He groans as she shoves him to the window, ushering him out on to the fire escape, quickly shutting the curtains behind him. 

She smooths down her hair and opens the door to Quigley. His hair is wet from the rain, his eyes dark and apologetic. Her heart softens immediately. 

“Hey,” he says, voice deep and hoarse.

“Hey,” she echoes, catching his sleeve and pulling him inside. 

She whispers her love against his skin as he moves within her, and when he kisses her she wants to cry at how intimate it is. He is so good, so kind, and her heart swells with affection. They finish together, and she curls into his side, feeling safe and loved. 

He holds her tightly, and before she drifts off she thinks about how perfectly their bodies fit together.

—

A year later, Violet turns nineteen. Four days after, Quigley proposes. She says yes. 

—

She traces the rim of her tea cup, absently pulling at a button on her sweater. It was horribly loose, she’d have to sew it back later. 

Her ring glints in the pink light of the setting sun. Olaf catches her hand, examining it with pale eyes. 

He scoffs. “He just had to put sapphires, didn’t he?”

Despite herself, Violet laughs. “I think it’s sweet,” she says honestly, admiring the diamond offset by two deep blue stones. 

“When do you leave?” he asks, breaking the silence they had found themselves in. 

“Two weeks, up to Peru to finish our training.”

“And then?”

“And then we graduate.”

“Then marry,” he finishes, voice flat.

She nods. 

“I suppose this is it, then.”

“I suppose so.”

It is late in the night when he leaves her little apartment, the moon swollen in the inky sky. 

“Goodbye, Olaf.”

He stands before her, tracing the curve of her cheekbone with a finger. “Violet,” he says, voice soft and quiet.

She watches him leave. She knows she will never see him again. 

—

Violet’s second wedding is simple. Her dress is sleek and elegant. She carries a bouquet of peonies and there is no baby’s breath in sight. 

Quigley stands tall and handsome in his suit, a boyish grin on his face when he sees her. Her voice is strong when she says her vows, and she means every word. When she slips her hand into his, she can feel the cold of his wedding band against her skin and she cannot help but beam up at him, alight with happiness. 

Isadora is beyond thrilled at their marriage. She is teary as she hugs Violet tightly. “Now we’re sisters!” she says excitedly, and Violet smiles at her best friend. 

Klaus and Duncan make wonderful toasts, and Sunny makes them a stunning wedding cake. They spend the night drinking wine and eating cake and they are so happy. 

When the first light of dawn peeks over the horizon and the festivities are finally over, Violet sighs, happy and tired. The early morning air is chilly despite the season, and she smiles as Quigley wraps his suit jacket around her, enveloping her in his warmth. 

“Hello, wife,” he says, grinning. “You ready to go home?”

Violet smiles up at him. “Home,” she agrees, lacing her fingers with his.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are so appreciated, let me know what you think!
> 
> hate it or love it I want to hear it all!


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